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Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Chinese monk Han-shan (the English translation of
which is Cold Mountain) was a recluse and, by all surviving accounts, a
rascal.Han-shan, whose given name
remains unknown, lived, according to scholarly estimates, between the late
sixth and the early ninth centuries...most likely.At some point during his adult life he had a
wife and son….probably.How the family
separated, as they most certainly must have for the following legend to have
played out, is a mystery equal to every other element of the man’s life.Scholars even disagree, in fact, on the appropriate
presentation of his name: Han-shan, Han Shan, etc.The one detail of Han-shan’s life that is
beyond reproof are the more than 300 poems composed on cave walls on the
mountain from which Han-shan drew his name.

The poems are nearly always attributed to Han-shan
who lived for lengthy stretches over several decades upon the same secluded
mountain.The cave’s walls are covered,
as are the trunks of surrounding trees, with poems about the mountain
itself—its vistas, its seasonal changes, its inhabitants (none human but the
poet himself)—and, though a recluse, episodes involving his life before the
mountain and his dealings during infrequent sojourns to nearby towns and
temples.In short, the bulk of these
more than 300 poems deal in simple observation, natural or social, but are able
to transcend their mundane facts, quietly blossoming into spiritual
truths.For this reason, and the
attractiveness of overall biographical mystery, countless poets, scholars,
misfits and Zen practitioners today count themselves amongst the devoted.

Countless translations of these poems have ornamented
bookshelves since the 1950s, some merely fragments while others are entire
catalogs of the 300 plus Cold Mountain poems.Many readers’ first exposure to the name Han-shan was thanks to Jack
Kerouac, whose 1958 novel, The Dharma Bums,
is dedicated to the recluse monk.Later
printings of Gary Snyder’s first book, Riprap,
including translations of twenty-four Cold Mountain poems.These twenty-four, though not the first time
Han-shan’s work had been translated into English, were the first time his work
had appeared lumped in with a popular collection of poetry and, as such,
provided most readers’ first, serious glimpse at what the Cold Mountain poems
were all about.

A few translations aside from Snyder’s include
those of Burton Watson, whose Cold
Mountain: 100 Poems by the T’ang poet Han-shan (1962), is often regarded as
Han-shan’s first EN MASSE scholarly translations
into English; and one of the more recent bulk additions, Cold Mountain Poems (2009), translated and edited by J. P.
Seaton.Special attention should also be
credited to Arthur Waley, whose “27 Poems by Han-shan” appeared in Encounter in September of 1954, perhaps
touching off the powder keg of subsequent of translations ever since.

The aforementioned translations — those by Snyder,
Burton, Seaton and Waley — are the nucleus of this essay, which will attempt to
display and discuss one specific Han-shan poem, of four total, chosen for
translation by each.

Red Pine, whose The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain (2000) compiles all of the more than 300 Cold Mountain
poems, attempts a word-for-word translation without embellishment or
frill.What Red Pine provides is,
perhaps, as close to the original as an English translation can get.Because of this purity, Red Pine’s translation
will serve as a foundation upon which an analysis of the other four translation
(below) can be built.

People
ask the way to Cold Mountain

but
roads don’t reach Cold Mountain

in
summer the ice doesn’t melt

and
the morning fog is too dense

how
did someone like me arrive

our
minds are not the same

if
they were the same

you
would be here (47)

This, we are to believe, is the precise English
equivalent of what Red Pine found written on the cave walls, without embellishment:
no punctuation, eight lines, adjectives and adverbs perhaps implied, but none
physically present.But is a direct
translation like this one actually a poem?

Each translator’s contribution is unique, and in
accordance with his own agenda and voice, he has attempted to create art (discerning
implied meaning, attitude and perspective) by taking Han-shan’s words and
applying them to research based on Han-shan, his time and place, and conducting
a secondary translation that attempts to make such poetry palatable to
contemporary Americans readers.(Please forgive the male pronoun, him, but the sample presented here is
representative of the body of work available, which is overwhelmingly
male.)The specific agenda and voice of
each translation, presented here in chronological order, proves enlightening
when the poems in question are presented together.

Despite the many similarities inevitable in
translations drawn from the same source poem, the four translators included
here take an amazingly varied approach to recreating not only the poem, but
also the poet.This concept — recreating
the poet himself — is of utmost importance in analyzing the translations.Most of those drawn to Han-shan and his work,
consciously or otherwise, consider the man and the man of legend to be of equal
importance to the poems themselves.While not unique, this type of reverence is, at least, rare.We must, then, contemplate not only the
translation but also the spirit of which the translation were born.What, we must ask, is so appealing about
Han-shan and his work, and how has that shaped the translations?

Arthur Waley viewed the source material through an
academic lens.A scholar of ancient
Chinese literature and translation who scooped the poetry world by first
rendering Han-shan’s work in English, Waley’s method is calm and complete.Without any precedent, Waley found and
translated Han-shan’s work through the western methods of which he was
accustomed.Though attempting to give an
accurate portrayal of the poems he was translating, Waley also sought to smooth
the rough edges, adding punctuation where necessary and producing elegant
sentences that, though drawn from a centuries-old Chinese source, would easily
fit the western academic aesthetic.

I am
sometimes asked the way to the Cold Mountain;

There
is no path that goes all the way.

Even
in summer the ice never melts;

Far
into the morning the mists gather thick.

How,
you may ask, did I manage to get here?

My
heart is not like your heart.

If only
your heart were like mine

You
too would be living where I live now.

Contemplate the final two lines: “If only your
heart were like mine/ You too would be living where I live now (lines
7-8).This payoff, as it were, would be more witty, more poignant and maybe
more acerbic, depending on your reading, were it rendered in fewer words.But it wouldn’t necessary be, if efforts were
made to make it more conversational, as complete or as in accordance with
formal grammar and syntax.Waley, then,
attempts to address meaning without much thought for tone.

The opening lines illustrate a similar point.Waley writes, “I am sometimes asked the way
to the Cold Mountain;/ There is no path that goes all the way” (1-2).Why not dispense with the colon, subsequently
beginning the second line with “but?”One need look at the end of every line in the translation but one to
find a possible answer.Each line ending,
with the exception of line seven, is punctuated with a relatively hard
stop.Punctuating each line ending is a
formal gesture that places Waley firmly with the academy and, at the risk of
sounding even more judgmental, firmly on the far side or World War II.

Waley has not only observed the formality of
punctuating each line ending (and capitalized each beginning), but he has also
taken pains to use the right
punctuation to do so.Dispensing with
the semi colon at the end of the first line and inserting “but” at the
beginning of the second would still allow for punctuation — a comma would slip
nicely into the semi colon’s place — but each of Waley’s punctuated line endings
is punctuated with a much more solid, insurmountable stop — semi colons, period
and a question mark — than a comma can provide.But what does a semi colon have to do with a several hundred year old
poem written on a cave wall?

While recognition that Waley has taken pains to
observe the niceties of punctuation is particularly telling, a look at line length
also sheds light on his approach.Where
possible Waley has made efforts, or so it seems, to create lines of comparable
length except where it is advantageous to deviate.Lines six is the shortest of the eight.The same line is, by no coincidence, the turn.Waley made no effort, as hid did in the preceding seven lines, to
artificially formalize the language, instead opting to set this particular line
apart, both syllabically and rhetorically, as the fulcrum upon which the
following two lines, what I called earlier the payoff, are hinged.Waley
discerned, despite the great cultural and spatial distance between Han-shan and
the western poetic tradition, the linguistic similarities that might allow his
translations to apply formal western structures on seemingly informal eastern
poems.

I’ve used in my assessment of Waley’s translation
#VI, loaded terms like academic, erudite, and formal.I stand by these labels and yet I must also
mention that, however formal, Waley’s poem can also be particularly
exhilarating.

Waley’s line four, as just one example, uses a
shift in syntax to render the language palpable.Waley writes, “Far into the morning the mists
gather thick.”Forcing the reader to
linger on the one syllable, two digraphs word stops them (with help from the
following period), swelling their tongues and making that fog thicken in their
mouth and mind’s eye.The mist is
further animated by the fact that, while an adjective, it falls after the verb,
thereby almost modifying it instead of the noun.It’s the joined mist that is thick, not the
method in which the mist gathers.Yet
the gathering — the very act itself — given this partial reshuffling in syntax,
becomes thick, rendering the mist itself an active participant in its own conglomeration.The adjective becomes so inextricable from
the verb that the reader begins to feel the phantom pain where the –ly ought to
be.

Gary Snyder’s translation employs the
conversational approach that is so audibly absent from that of Waley.Snyder’s diction and syntax highlight his
rejection of formality and his acceptance of common parlance as fit lifeblood
of literature.Whereas Waley’s lines
were even, calming and regulated, Snyder’s are wholly unpredictable; each line
presents a different rhythm and unaffiliated voice.

Men ask the way to Cold Mountain

Cold Mountain: there’s no through trail.

In summer, ice doesn’t melt

The rising sun blurs in swirling fog.

How did I make it?

My heart’s not the same as yours.

If your heart was like mine

You’d
get it and be right here. (42)

The first example in the poem of Snyder
unpredictability is the hard caesura of line two: “Cold Mountain: there’s no
through trail.”Snyder’s line one is similar
to Waley’s, though less wordy, but the colon after the mountain name takes any
momentum the reader might have built and, in no uncertain terms, crushes
it.Snyder’s translation does not allow
for rhythmic complacence.

Snyder’s refusal to let the reader grow
comfortable does not mean that the translation is free of elegant
language.Only that the elegance is also
impossible to predict, which makes it just as unaccommodating as any other
line.In line six, for example, Snyder
allows for the expansion of the poems rhythmic scope.Snyder writes, “The rising sun blurs in
swirling fog.”Another, more stark
approach might include dispensing with the initial determiner, but this line
stands out as being particularly poetic
in a poem that largely defies such genteel classification.

Though not vernacular exactly, another way Snyder
distances himself from the academy is by employing certain simple unpoetic or
common diction.Snyder’s speaker asks,
“How did I make it?” (5).Compare
Snyder’s “make it” with Waley’s “How, you may ask, did I manage to get here?”
(5).“Make it” seems particularly
inelegant, yet the reader knows, in context, precisely what “it” means, because
it means precisely what it says.

This colloquial treatment of the poem’s turn is mirrored by a companion phrase
in line eight.Snyder writes, “If your
heart was like mine/ You’d get it and be right here” (7-8). “Get it” works, more or less, on the same
level as “make it.”Both are overt
attempts to both celebrate common speech and simultaneously thumb one’s nose at
formality.The two concepts are not
mutually exclusive nor are they inextricable.One can be employed without the other but, when taken in the same dose,
the effect is greatly heightened.Whereas
Snyder’s inclusion of “make it” and “get it” mimic the way most people might
express the concept (and do so successfully) the location of these phrases, in
the turn and the payoff, render the usage a vast departure from literary
tradition.

To call this type of language solely a social or
stylistic choice would be inaccurate.Snyder, sensing a kindred spirit, was attempting to recreate Han-shan,
not just his work, on the page.Would a miserably
poor, mountaineering, recluse monk speak with perfect and elegent diction?Snyder, apparently, think’s not.

I refer to Waley as representative of a poetic
that would be more at home prior to the Second World War.Snyder, too, can be just as easily fixed in
time.Coming of age in an era when the
world was shrinking (World Wars tend to have that effect), Snyder directly
benefited from the influx of alternative
artistic influences, especially literary, that spilled in.Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say
that many Americans spilled out,
traveling specifically to Europe and Asia, and being confronted with poetry the
likes of which they never dreamed existed.Snyder was among their numbers, finding Buddhism and finding Han-shan,
though not necessarily in that order.

Snyder, a thoroughly documented Beat poet and spiritual
mentor, became “the rebel model for American youth from the late 1950s to
1970s” (Tan 4), co-opting the Han-shan image and refracting it through the lens
of American counterculture.In short,
there’s a lot of Han-shan in Kerouac’s Sal Paradise.

Burton Watson, on the other hand, followed
Waley’s lead, creating translations that attempt to retain meaning.What sets Watson’s translations apart, among
other things, is that he did them in bulk.Translating 100 Cold Mountain poems in his Cold Mountain: 100 Poems by the T’ang poet Han-shan, Watson might
have had the same basic approach as Waley, but Watson made choices that render
his translations unique. Watson’s translation #82 is able to achieve the basic word-for-word, funneling it into western formalities
approach while infusing his translation with new meanings and unexpected
diction.

People ask the way to Cold Mountain.

Cold Mountain?There is no road that goes through.

Even in summer the ice doesn’t melt;

Though the sun comes out, the fog is
blinding.

How can you hope to get there by aping me?

Your heart and mine are not alike.

If your heart were the same as mine,

Then
you could journey to the very center! (100)

A prime example of Watson’s surprise content is,
“How can you hope to get their by aping me?” (5).None of the other translators sampled here go
so far out on a limb in translating this line.Though the language isn’t, by and large, dazzling, by shifting the rhetorical
structure (line5) and including the slang, “aping,” Watson is able to
revitalize a translation that, otherwise, is a bit flat.

“Aping” is perhaps more appropriate than this one
poem alone can show.As a character,
Han-shan is often represented as playful and pure, comical yet wise in the face
of hypocrisy.Han-shan’s sense of humor,
on display throughout a large chunk of his more than 300 poems, has as much to
do with a primate as it does, sometimes, the world of men.Let alone the fact that he lived solitary in
a mountain cave for lengthy stretches throughout his life and that in China he
is often represented as a spirit particularly representative of the natural
world, the poems themselves, and first-hand accounts of encounters with the
recluse monk, show a personae both innocent and inquisitive, energetic and a
bit of a nuisance.Han-shan encompassed,
then, attributes that, at least in relation to his fellow monks who would never
dream of leaving the safety and relative comfort of the temple or the town, the
characteristics of a wild primate.

Today we laugh with
and not at Han-shan, who was
supposedly two steps ahead of his brethren, spiritually speaking.“Aping,” then, might take on the opposite
meaning.If the other monks are the ones
truly misguided, then any attempt they make, until they’ve gotten their
spiritual house in order, are doomed to appear foolish to Han-shan who, having
already figured it all out, can sit back and laugh at the monkeys who
blunderingly imitate a superior being.

Han-shan truly was as singular, perhaps, as a
person can be, but he was also a man of the world who measured himself, in
part, by others’ perception of him.Like
anyone else, Han-shan suffered when judged harshly, was lonely at times, and
felt the burden of age increasingly encompass him.Han-shan carried on conversations in his poem
about these same issue, despite the fact that no one was around to read or
hear.Yet, at the heart of almost all
the work there is the distinct feeling that Han-shan is addressing an unnamed
someone, some audience or recipient of his wisdom, both common and revelatory.Part of this feeling stems from Han-shan’s
use of “you” and “your,” but this is overly simplistic as each of the
translations also uses second person. This voiceless receptacle in which Han-shan
poured the workings of his mind, some faceless auditor, is as much a character
as the speaker himself.

Burton Watson introduces the auditor a bit more
than do previous translators.The
question in line five feels far less rhetorical, implying not only the auditor’s
existence, but also a complicit and active role in Han-shan’s discourse.Han-shan was a recluse and mystic, yes, but
his mountain, however isolated, was no island.

Perhaps what first stands out in J. P. Seaton’s
translation is the even, complete lines.Each line, with the exception of the final two comprising the payoff, is complete in and of
itself.This feature renders the
translation formal, maybe even overly wordy; a lot is packed into each.It also compels me to revisit the other
poems, retroactively noticing that they, too, share this feature.Why should this characteristic in Seaton’s
poem be so obvious while going largely unnoticed by me in the three previous
translations? One possible
differentiator is the caesura.

People ask about the Cold Mountain way:

Plain roads don’t get through to Cold
Mountain.

Middle of the summer, and the ice still
hasn’t melted.

Sunrise, and the mist would blind a hidden
dragon.

So, how could a man like me get here?

My heart is not the same as yours, dear sir…

If your heart were like mine,

You’d be here already. (27)

Seaton employs no hard
stops throughout any line in the poem.Four commas regulate reader rhythm to a degree, but they provide barely
a hiccup.Arthur Waley uses even fewer
commas (two), and nothing else, but Waley uses those commas efficiently,
shaking up the conventional syntax.Waley
writes, “How, you may ask, did I manage to get here?” (5).Such usage is far from unconventional, but it
does provide enough of a deviation, given the brevity of the poem, to shape the
whole experience.

Gary Snyder places a colon in line two.Though he uses nothing but commas thereafter,
the colon is enough of a disruptor, when coupled with the erratic line lengths
and rhythms, to characterize the whole poem.Burton Watson uses a question mark in the same position as Snyder’s
colon.Though the hard stop is not
identical, it serves a similar purpose in shaking up the rhythms of such a
short poem.Seaton’s translation, at
least in this regard, is fairly unencumbered.

But one element Seaton does
include that sets his translation apart is italics.As used here, Seaton’s italics increase the
dramatic mode by further interacting with (or upon) an auditor.Seaton’s auditor, however, does not have the
same relationship to the speaker as does Watson’s.The italics provide the emphatic imperative
that there is real tension, not just on the part of the speaker, but perhaps
seething from both.Seaton’s “dear sir…” (6), is both overly
deferential and sarcastic.One can
almost see the speaker bow graciously, acerbically, in the auditor’s direction.Though there is an element of tension, maybe
even pain, in each translation, Seaton pushes this element to an aggressive
level.

Me must, I think, briefly discuss that “dragon”
(4).Why it should make an appearance in
this poem I cannot say.Of the seven
translations I have read of this poem none of the other six so much as hint at
a dragon.Is the inclusion here a
culturally insensitive method of giving this poem some added Chinese
flare?I tend to doubt it.For one thing, such stereotyping is absent
from the rest of Seaton’s Cold Mountain
Poems; at no other point is a mythical element of Chinese culture exploited
to boldly.

It’s also important to note that this particular
line is, of the five translations included herein, by far the most widely
varied.Though the meaning remains the
same, more or less, throughout the five versions, the level of creativity with
which each translator renders the lines is one of the details that makes
comparing these translations so worthwhile.

Arthur Waley’s line four reads, “Far into the
morning the mists gather thick.”Snyder
writes, “The rising sun blurs in swirling fog” (4).No dragon, perhaps, but beautiful, evocative
language in their own respects.

Individual details aside, what is so enthralling about
this particular Han-shan poem that makes it so rife for translation?We can add to those provided here Peter
Hobson’s translation, A. S. Kline’s, and countless others.But why, when so many Han-shan poem go
relatively unnoticed, should this one stand out?Perhaps because Han-shan’s physical journey to and existence on Cold Mountain is a metaphor for his spiritual journey which, as
Joan Quoinglin Tan points out in Han
Shan, Chan Buddhism and Gary Snyder’s Ecopoetic Way, “is often seen as a
reflection on the ancient Chinese literati’s pilgrimage to Chan enlightenment”
(3).Whereas most translators are not
Buddhist (Snyder and Red Pine excluded), Han-shan’s journey is vaguely
universal in that many people journey toward or away from some form of
spirituality throughout their life.Han’shan’s
dualistic journey (both physical and spiritual) further enhances the mystery
and intrigue of an already attractive character.

This poem,
as succinctly as few others, provides the link between these two distinct threads
of Han-shan’s journey.It can also be
said that, so attractive as a man apart from the world of men, this poem gives
voice to Han-shan’s own personal contemplations on the matter, naming, as it
were, what he himself felt about his social standing.This insight provides a toehold for those
attempting to summit Cold Mountain and commune with its lone inhabitant.

The middle column above is
a representation of Han-shan’s original text as reproduced in Red Pine.

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